“I created ironic distance between myself and my failure, as all of us Crusaders did. On the bus ride to our practice field (which was on the campus of a mental hospital) we cheered wildly at every red light and stop sign because each second we were delayed meant one fewer spent at practice.” Keefe writes. “The bus driver eventually started rolling through stop signs just to mess with us and disrupt the timing of our applause.”

Funny football foibles, though, are not Keefe’s point in dredging up decades-old musings on his quarterback play. There’s important lessons in losing, he writes, that only become known through the sharp clarity of adult hindsight.